Posted on January 15th, 2020
With the new year officially upon us, we have a fresh opportunity to start the year off right with a lawn care plan. Everybody wants essentially the same thing: a healthy and beautiful lawn. By setting your lawn care goals for the new year early, you can properly prepare for the year ahead. Here are a few of the top tips for setting lawn care goals for the new year.
One of the most important lawn care goals for the new year is setting up a lawn fertilization schedule. Lawns need the right nutrients throughout the year in order to thrive. Fertilizer combines nutrients like Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium in many different combinations. Seen as “N-P-K” on most bags of fertilizer, the mixture is different depending on the grass type and time of year. Making sure you get the right mixture and apply it at the right time is essential to the health of your lawn.
Fertilizer applications in the spring, summer, and fall are all different because the lawn is behaving differently in each season. Spring is all about waking up and “greening up”. Summer is a time of stress for lawns, with higher temperatures and less frequent rain. Fall is a time for repair and preparation for the winter. If you give your lawn everything it needs, then it’ll be able to grow in nice and thick. Your lawn will be softer and greener. The kids and pets will love playing in it and you’ll be able to entertain in it.
Another essential lawn care goal for the new year is giving your lawn consistent weed control. Weeds drain your lawn of valuable resources for the grass. The quick-growing weeds outcompete the grass for space, sunlight, nutrients, and water, causing immense stress on your lawn. The result is a lawn that is significantly less healthy and more open to attacks from pests, diseases, and drought.
Eliminating the competition for your grass allows it to grow in thick and beautiful. Start with a preventative approach in the early spring with a pre-emergent herbicide. Pre-emergents keep overwintering weed seeds from germinating and sprouting. A well-timed pre-emergent application will eliminate the first generation of weeds before they even sprout. After that, use post-emergents to spot treat throughout the late spring, summer, and early fall. Finish the year with broadleaf weed control in the fall. You may even want to apply another pre-emergent to eliminate any seeds that were laid down at the end of the year.
The final lawn care goal for the new year is treating your lawn to core aeration. This service may seem extreme and even look devastating, but it’s one of the best services to do for a lawn. Core aeration uses an aerator to pull out little cores of compacted soil. This process breaks up any excess thatch and relieves the lawn of soil compaction. Soil compaction and excess thatch are two of the worst things for a lawn and aeration solves them both, at the same time.
Aerating your lawn is a service that’s ideally down once per year. For our cool-season grasses here in Massachusetts, the best time to aerate your lawn is in the fall. Loosening up the soil and breaking up the thatch at the end of the year allows the roots to grow deeper, strengthening the grass before winter. The roots will have easier access to nutrients, air, and water. Core aeration revitalizes your lawn after a year of heavy use. Making sure you aerate your lawn in 2020 will help you maintain a healthy lawn.
Set your lawn up for success in 2020 by setting your lawn care goals for the new year. With a lawn care program and core aeration services from Turf Unlimited, you’ll give your lawn the best chance at a healthy year.
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